


where there's moonlight i see your eyes

by isthisenoughorcanwegohigher



Category: The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types
Genre: Post-The Death Cure, Safe Haven (Maze Runner)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:01:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28305720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isthisenoughorcanwegohigher/pseuds/isthisenoughorcanwegohigher
Summary: Thomas realizes he can no longer remember the color of Newt's eyes.
Kudos: 6





	where there's moonlight i see your eyes

_ “What’s your favorite color?” _

_ Thomas, still choking on Gally’s drink, stared into Newt’s eyes. The light from the bonfire made them shine. _

_ “What?” _

_ “What’s your favorite color?” Newt repeated, laughing. _

_ “That’s such a stupid question,” Thomas said. _

_ “Okay, but per the rules of the game, you need to answer it!” _

_ "Brown,” Thomas answered, before he froze in the middle of laughing as he realized that he’d picked brown because he was looking at Newt’s face. _

_ The older boy’s eyes were a specific shade of brown, right in the middle of the color, a rich caramel. And Thomas couldn’t help but feel like he could get lost in those eyes. _

_ “You like gardening that much?” Newt questioned, a smirk on his face. “Thought you were gunning to be a Runner.” _

_ “Ha.” Thomas tore his gaze from Newt and stared across the bonfire at the walls of the Maze. _

_ “Your turn.” _

_ “What?” _

_ “Your turn,” Newt said. “Ask me a question.” _

_ “Okay….” Thomas paused, trying to come up with a good question. “What’s your favorite phase of the moon?” _

A cool breeze shifted Thomas’s hammock enough to shake him out of sleep. The months old conversation slipped away as easily as a nightmare brushed to the edge of remembering. Thomas opened his eyes with a quiet and regretful sigh, staring in the darkness at the canvas roof overhead. If there was anything he missed about the Glade, it was the ability to see the stars any time he woke up in the darkness. It had been difficult at times to see them through the branches he slept under, but he could always see them. Here, they were blocked by the tarps. Useful for other reasons, but Thomas hated it.

Newt would have hated it, too.

It had been nearly a year since Newt had died, and Thomas was remembering more and more of the conversations they’d shared, the nights they’d stayed up together. Even now, Thomas couldn’t stay in his hammock and be okay staring at the tarp. He had to see the stars. See the moon. Without them, he felt like he was suffocating. So he swung his legs up and over the edge, where his feet hit the cool stone. He stood and moved with a practiced ease through the others still sleeping around him, forgoing his shoes. There wasn’t much need for them here, particularly on the nights when he found himself moving to the edge of the water.

This was one of those nights.

Thomas sank into the sand and let the waves wash over his feet, enjoying the way the rush of cold shocked his body. It reminded him that he was here, that he was present in this moment, when he so often felt lost in the past, in reflection and desire to have things that he knew he couldn’t.

Like Newt.

He missed Newt as deeply as he could, and even sometimes deeper, and it hurt in ways he didn’t know he could hurt. It was all too much. Vince had told him once that time would help heal the wounds, but time seemed to only be re-opening them, making them worse. Every little thing reminded Thomas of something he’d rather forget, something he was cursed with the knowledge of. The burden of knowing and losing someone was, perhaps, the worst burden of all. Because now Thomas could never forget that Newt’s favorite phase of the moon was when it was half full, because if you looked at it just right, you could see the curve in the line across its surface, and you could imagine what it must be like to be on that line. Sitting on the moon, half in light, half in dark, staring back at the Earth. And how the Earth must look, with half of its surface scorched and burned into sand and destruction, and half water, and the occasional city left standing with their bright lights twinkling in the distance.

Thomas lay back in the sand, not caring about it getting everywhere. It would do that anyways, lying in it or not. He stared at the sky, clear and bright, and let the moon hypnotize him with its otherworldly glow. He thought back to the times he’d stared at Newt just as long, just as entranced by him. And then a sinking feeling he couldn’t quite place tugged at him, and though he tried to sit up to puzzle through it, it was as though he was trapped on his back, staring up at the night sky. 

He tore his gaze from the moon and searched around the inky black above him, trying to control his breathing as he struggled to figure out where he’d gone from reminiscing to feeling out of control and terrified   
And then it hit, all at once, as he inevitably found his gaze drawn back to the moon.

He couldn’t remember the color of Newt’s eyes. Oh, he could remember that they were brown, but the shade and beauty of them had been thoroughly eclipsed by the black and lined look they had to them the last time he’d been face to face with Newt. The bloodshot, angry, lost gaze that he’d held as he pulled away from a twisted embrace only to discover a knife in Newt’s chest. That memory, of Newt being all wrong and not being able to save him, had taken over and blocked everything else.

He couldn’t remember how it looked when Newt smiled and the light in his eyes brightened the brown. He couldn’t remember any of it. And that, somehow, was worse than remembering the sick eyes he saw in his nightmares. Worse than remembering the guttural noises Newt shouldn’t have been capable of making when they’d fought each other over the gun, the knife, his life. Newt’s life.

All Thomas knew was that they had been brown, and that that would never be enough.


End file.
